65daysofstatic: The Distant and Mechanised Glow of East European Dance Parties EP

65daysofstatic
The Distant and Mechanised Glow of East European Dance Parties
Monotreme
2008-04-29

As one of the few acts still hoisting the flag for that old fashioned post-rock sound these days (albeit with more brains and muscles than most of that misbegotten genre), 65daysofstatic stepped up their game with last year’s The Destruction of Small Ideas. The album evolved in a way that either expanded the reach of post-rock or showed that 65daysofstatic had moved beyond the constraints of the genre, depending on how charitable you feel towards the term. Here they expand further, with two remixes of one of the standouts from the last album and two new tracks. “Dance Parties (Distant)” and “Dance Parties (Mechanised)”, as these versions are mercifully abridged, shake things up considerably; the former boasts a cyberchoir of massed band members shouting, tunefully, and the latter amps things even further into the maximalist, neon techno-psychedelic grounds occupied by someone like M83. “Goodbye, 2007” and “Antique Hyper Mall” aren’t nearly as exciting or as radical, and probably work better here than on the album. But 65daysofstatic’s lesser work is still more exciting than most of their contemporaries, and those remixes suggest just how utterly, wonderfully ridiculous an album the band could make in their ultra-dense style if they decided to.

RATING 6 / 10